First letter from the MTC

Hi this is Whitney’s mom, posting for Whitney because missionaries can’t post on blogs.

September 28, 2015 (First letter from the MTC)

My beloved people!!!

HOLY COW I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!

For those of you who don’t want to read a long email, just know that I am LOVING the MTC and I am doing really well. Also that I love you all a whole bunch… for everyone else, here is my novel;

I have two companions, Sister Brown and Sister Ives. Sister Brown is the one I met on instagram a few weeks ago who is also going to Orlando, and Sister Ives is going to Perth Australia along with the rest of the missionaries in our district and the other district in our zone that also got here Wednesday so we are two Floridians in a sea of Australians but it is a blast and a half. We are rooming with sister Beardall and Sister Campbell who are also so funny. Sister Ives and Sister Beardall seriously have me laughing until my stomach hurts every night. The other two sets of elders in my district are Elder Bacca who is the district leader, his comp, Elder Rose, and Elder Johnson and Elder B who are the zone leaders. We get along pretty well and we have been having a lot of fun.

I got Briana’s letter yesterday and I got the cookies and stuff from my familamilie today and they made me so excited! If missionaries love one thing it’s mail. So thank you so much for sending those!

This week has been crazy and I have so much to tell you guys so hopefully I can fit an ounce of it in!

Wednesday they whipped me from you guys, sent me through a line, and before I knew it I was sitting in class with a name tag going “HOW IN THE WORLD DID I GET HERE!?” But about an hour into it I just couldn’t stop smiling because being a missionary feels so great!

Our teachers are Sister Thayer and Sister Olsen and they are the cutest RMs EVER. They are basically both the epitome of EFY counselors so we party hard. They are both young reticently returned RMs and I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!

Thursday was a good day of classes and the usual MTC stuff.

Friday night Sister Brown started to get sick so we missed our evening stuff so she could rest. Sister Ives and I studied that night in our rooms. Then on Saturday she was still feeling sick so we spent a lot of the morning trying to get a hold of doctors because the health clinic was closed. But she got a priesthood blessing from the elders in our district and felt a lot better later in the day. We are all happy and healthy now and starting to get back to normal.

Saturday night me and Sister Ives lead an impromptu discussion on the Plan of Salvation and it was crazy amazing. We did this huge thing on the board that I will try to send you a picture of. It was one of the best moments of teaching up to this point.

Our teaching (where we practice teaching our teachers who pretend to be investigators) have been going progressively better. Our first appointments were rough, but we have learned so much about following the spirit. We are teaching “Channy” and we got to skype an actual member named “Joy” that was my favorite lesson so far. We will also start teaching “Ivy Wang” for Progressive TRC tonight so we are praying that goes well!

Sunday was GREAT! We had fast and testimony meeting and there is nothing like a testimony meeting of missionaries! We also had several other “missionary meetings” which were all also very good. After the meetings we walked up to the temple to take pictures. And then last night we got to watch the Sunday night Devo that was really good and then we got to watch the “Characters of Christ” MTC talk by Elder Bednar and that was AMAZING!

Last night when we were all in the shower, Sister Beardall was tempted by donuts and WE LOCKED ALL 5 KEYS IN OUR ROOM! It was so funny because one by one we all came out and realized we were in our Pj’s and couldn’t get in our room. So me and another sister from another room ( I was the only one that had flipflops from our room.) had to walk all the way across campus to get a spare key. It was the most awkward funny thing ever. All these elders were staring at me like “why is she wearing her Pj’s in here?” haha good times.

Today we got to go to the temple and I realized something SO COOL! We have been studying the story of the Brother of Jared a lot the last few days and I just kept thinking “there has to be something more that I’m missing that the Lord wants me to know because people keep bringing it up!” And when I was in the temple I totally learned something way cool! For any of you have gone through the temple I want you to read Ether 3 and think about how the brother of Jared saw the finger first, and then all of Christ when the veil was lifted, and then I want you to think about how that is similar to the temple.

After the temple we watched Elder Richard G. Scott’s funeral and that was amazing. If you haven’t already watched that I highly suggest you watch it. And if you don’t have enough time to watch the whole thing at least listen to the closing song because HOLY COW it had us almost in tears.

I love you all a whole bunch and will try to send some pictures if I can. (The internet has been spotty today so I will hopefully be able to do that.) Have an AMAZING week!